The inventive concepts described herein relate to a semiconductor device, and more particularly, relate to a logic embedded nonvolatile memory semiconductor device.
A card system such as a smart card or a USIM (Universal Subscriber Identity Module) may be a chip that includes both a nonvolatile memory device and system logic. The nonvolatile memory device that is implemented on the same chip as the system logic may be referred to as a logic embedded flash memory. During fabrication, it is desirable that the logic embedded flash memory may be easily combined with the other system logic that is part of the card system.
For example, the logic embedded flash memory may be used as a code memory. The code data that is stored in the code memory may be frequently updated according to the operation of the card system. The amount of data that is changed when the code data is updated may be relatively small. However, the logic embedded flash memory may, in general, operate in an erase-after-write manner. Thus, each update of the code data may inevitably cause erase and program operations. Thus, even though only a small amount of data may need to be updated, a significant portion of the memory area may be erased as part of the update.